I’ve heard it just as much as you have. Chances are we have said it enough times that if we strung all of our “somedays” together, we might (and I caution might) actually be somewhere different.
We’ve all heard the saying, “There are seven days in a week and ‘someday’ isn’t one of them.”
What is “someday” anyway? Where did it come from?
According to most dictionaries, “someday” is described as “an indefinite period of time in the future.” We might as well say “never.” Right? Because that’s what we really mean.
But we are not completely ready to throw in the towel on something we secretly want.
It’s a lazy way to be uncommitted to something, but still keep it somewhere off in the distance. Heaven forbid we say, “YES!” We might actually have to do what we said we would do and yet saying, “NO!” is going against what our heart really wants. Our indecisiveness is killing every dream. When did we become so complacent and wishy-washy?
Have we all become so like Charlie Brown that we tell ourselves “someday” we will kick that football Lucy is holding for us, even though she pulls it away at the last minute every time?
Have we watched too many others fail at something that seems like something so much easier that attempting something just a smidge more difficult is enough to hold us back? But let’s get something straight before I go any further…
“Someday” is the language of the mind, not the heart.
And because the mind is where logic, reason, fear, and doubt make their home, no wonder “someday” is said as often as it is…it is meant to cover and hide the wishes of the heart. It allows us to hold onto something we still want without actually committing fully to it.
Then, we come to a point in our lives when “someday” is so far out of reach, we know “someday” will never come. In our hearts, that regret becomes a “never” and without warning, our hearts weep for the dream we never pursued.
The dream we didn’t have the courage to fight for, let alone fail at. The dream that always kept “someday” from becoming a “never” too soon. The dream we will never see come to life.
Our somedays are compiled up of our tomorrows not yet written and our “bucket” list becomes the calling card we never got to complete. For one reason or another.
The never-ending “what if I do” and “what if I don’t” questions are what keeps us in that revolving door, going around in circles as we talk ourselves into one thing only to talk ourselves out of it a minute later. We can never live fully if our lives are full of days that will never come. Days we never allow to come.
Days we shrug off as unimportant and dumb. At times, “someday” and “one day” become interchangeable. We use them as our “outs” – our explanations to the world (and even ourselves) why nothing that grand, that imaginative, that crazy should be tried.
We assume failure before we have a chance to fail. We assume ridicule before acceptance.
So why is this so hard? Why do we find ourselves in this predicament of turmoil?
Because we never take one step out of the door.
It’s safe inside the glass walls and partitions of the door that never requires us to leave it. A normal door has two options – we are either in or out. It never has a moment when we are not in between like a revolving door does – we are in this empty space of “not quite out and not quite in.”
This perpetual “holding pattern” is what wreaks havoc on the things we are most passionate about, the things we believe in the most, the things that set our hearts on fire, the things we dream about most. We have come to the end of this article, but not the end of the discussion. Not by any means.
We have come to the point where you must make a choice…
You either stay where you are, going around in circles, allowing the momentum of going nowhere in that revolving door shuffle you from day to the next…
OR
…you choose one way or the other and you decide if you are “in” or you are “out.” It doesn’t matter if you choose one or the other…what matters is that you choose.
